I went to high school in a city known for its Venezuelan population. My graduating class had more people born in Venezuela than the US. My history teacher for all four years was Venezuelan. So, yeah, I'm little familiar with Chavez.
Chavez is like the anti-Reagan. Where Reagan wanted to give too much support to the upper-class, causing a larger and larger gap between the rich and the poor, Chavez wants to cut too much away from the upper class, driving them and all of their capitol out of the country. He gets re-elected because the people who disagree with him and *can* leave, generally do. When I was 16 and we were poised to invade Iraq, he was one of my bigger reasons for staying out: if our hands are tied, he can do whatever he wants with virtually no fear of retribution.
It's kinda funny: my two countries are back-stabbing each other. While the US gets most of its foreign oil from Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia (countries which would sooner attack Israel than trade for oil), Israel is forced to get all of their oil from Venezuela, basically by default. It takes less than a day by barge to get from Venezuela to the US Gulf Coast. A pipe (from English occupation) is already existent to pump oil from Iraq into Israel (the pipe is blocked and unused for obvious reasons). It would be so much more efficient to just trade enemies for a while. Wouldn't it?
